In my closet cleaning and sorting frenzy last week, I came up with a stack of old t-shirts. Most were a little stained or too worn to donate to Goodwill but nice enough that they still had some life in them.
I really like rags cut out of old t-shirts, so I cut some of the thinner, stretchier shirts into squares. These rags are great for dusting and polishing or drying as you clean.
I had long wanted to try making some of these t-shirt bags. I've admired them on other blogs and kept wanting to try them! I ended up making 8 of them in all. All 8 bags took me 30 minutes to complete!
I wasn't totally satisfied with these bags, though. In my opinion, they are not as cute in real life as they appear on blogs. I did find that the ones that looked the best to me were the smaller shirts that I used. Most of my shirts were too big and looked really wonky! I kept my two favorites and cut the rest into more rags. The two that I kept will be used for grocery bags. I'm guessing that they will work best for light-weight items. If I really like them, I'll make more when I have more shirts to recycle! As for looks, I imagine they will look better filled with groceries.
More ideas for reusing t-shirts:
-make a quilt
-cut squares to use as hankies especially when you have a cold-I can use some of my rags for this!
-Lindsay has a great post about re-using t-shirts. There are more ideas in the comments!
-sew other articles of clothing
-make a rug by knitting or crocheting strips of t-shirts together
Edit: Thanks to Monica for letting me know about Mama to Mama; a charity that donates baby hats sewn from old t-shirts! This would be a fun project to do with friends.
Any more ideas for re-using t-shirts? Please share!
I love finding new uses for things that I have around the house!
3 comments:
Great ideas, Mary Ann!
Did you see the link my post today? There is a mom organizing the sending of baby hats to Haiti for babies who need them - made out of OLD T-SHIRTS!!
These are good ideas!
My daughter made pillows from some old tee shirts and tried to sell them in her Etsy shop. She called them "shirties"
I would like to make a college theme quilt if I can save up enough "NC State" shirts. Sometimes I've found these at thrift shops.
Mary Ann,
What great ideas. I'm going to try the ideas of making rags out of t-shirts-can't have too many of those-and I want to try making a bag out of a t-shirt. I also really want to look into the Mama to Mama project. Thank you so much for sharing.
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